The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-04-09
CLIMPSES OF MEXICO.

Unlike our own habits in the school
room, the Mexican children, in all the
schools we have visited, study aloud, and,
being in Spanish it seemed as if bedlam
had broken loose in the school-room. A
slight whistle from the quaint old peda-
gogue and it was still as death. An ex-
ercise upon the blackboard for our bene-
fit showed that the work done in Spanish
schools is as thorough as that found in
our public schools. In some OF the Mex
lean States all children of proper age are
required to attend school, but the poverty
of the parents compels the child to help
exc out scanty subsistence for the fam.
lily, and the law is little better than a
dead letter.
Yesterday we encountered funeral.
The four bearers, tired with carrying the
coffined dead, are sitting on the curb
stone, and the casket is in the street at
their feet. Things are not always what
they seem TO be, even in our own land;
but here death came among the lowly
poor who find it much cheaper to live
than to die. The coffin is borrowed at a
small expense for the occasion, and is re-
turned to the undertaken after the funer-
al, and is ready for rental to the next Gus
toner. Even the ground rent for burial
is great hardship to the poor, and often
they cannot pay the tax for the quiet re.
pose of their dead for more than one or
two years, after which the bodies are dis
inferred, the bones are cast aside, and
the rent ceases. The people all being
Catholic, are devoutly faithful to their
church, its ordinances and requirements,
and the demands of the church are a Sc
we're draught upon the scanty earnings OF
the poor.
Our next stop by program, was made
at Siloa, quiet city OF $4,000 inhabitants,
the towers, spires, and minarets of it's
massive houses of worship rising high
above the low matched dwellings of its
residents, rich and poor. Its beautiful
gardens and clean-kept courts are filed
with choicest Towering plants and semi
tropical exotics. The city band gave a
concert in the evening in honor of our
visit. Our Pullman train was side-tracked
for the night, and we slept soundly to be
awakened with the morning light by
jargon OF bells-as though struck by a
thousand sledge-hammers. The bells in
this strange land all came from Spain,
and every old cathedral, church, monas-
terry, and convent has from three to twelve
never keyed to concert pitch, nor rung
as chimes, but hammered vigorously with
the clapper, and these people think it ex-
quisite music. Here our train made a
detour to Marfil, little Moorish town
with low, massive stone houses. The old
Fort of San Miguel, overlooking the city,
is place of interest to the visitors. From
Martil four cars take us on our tramway
through narrow, tortuous street, laid in
a ravine, to Guanaiuato, city of fifty
five thousand inhabitants-the metropo-
lis and capital of State of the same
name. The city was founded in 1854 by
the Spaniards. and it was named Guiana
juato, or the "Hill Of the Froge," by the
Tarrascan Indians, who there found
stone, frog shape, which they set up as an
idol and worshiped as deity.
This city has, in the buried past, been
the theater of many bloody battle. To
1910 it was conquered by Hidalgo's revo-
lutionists, and was captured and recap
tured many times as the war went on. |
The shot-marks, still visible in the ancient
walls, show the effectiveness of the eau
nonading.
1t is the dry season, and this is one of |
the most unhealthy places in the Repub-
lie. The air is freighted with disgusting
smells. There is no sewerage health
inspectors. The hundreds of mines and
reduction works use over and over the
little water that is doled out to them, and
the fumes of quicksilver and other chem
icals-the drying of the adobe bricks, in
which manure is intermixed instead of
straw, and hundreds of beastly smells,
were enough to make one run for their
lives. There is but one little sickly
mountain. stream that is available TO aid